HarperCollins Publishing Company is planning on utilizing the internet to boost web sales. The publishing company is beginning to post entire books online; these are new books to the market. Hosting the entire book online will give the interested reader the opportunity to read it before they buy. This is no different than going to a book store, perusing, flipping, and reading through books. HarperCollins Publishing believes, “The best way to sell books is to have the consumer be able to read some of the content.” They are hoping that this will increase the sales of books. Amazon.com does something very similar, but they limit it to the table of contents and only one or two chapters of the book. The books will not be available for an extended period of time, only about a month, and they also will not be downloadable or printable. One of the featured authors will have a new book on the site every month.
I believe this is a good idea to offer books online for free to look through. Recently, I purchased a book through amazon.com that I browed the first couple chapters and the book was a lot different than those two chapters. I was disappointed in my purchase. However, this will give readers a good chance to really see what the book is about. If readers like the book, they will be enticed to buy it because it is only available for a limited time and they would probably like to have it to reference in their personal library. This also gives authors greater exposure and since the website will be linked to amazon.com perhaps the books will have a higher chance of purchase. I think it is a good idea and if it ends up being profitable for HarperCollins, which is already a big name publishing company, I think in the future we will see more publishing companies beginning to do the same thing. (Word Count: 324)
Article: HarperCollins Will Post Free Books on the Web by Motoko Rich posted February 11, 2008 at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/business/media/11harper.html?ref=technology
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